A deep dive into the bill that could change Aotearoa forever.
The Regulatory Standards Bill (RSB) isn’t just another law – it’s a plan to hand more power to corporations, erase Te Tiriti o Waitangi from lawmaking, and make it harder for any future government to protect people or nature.
David Seymour – the same politician who tried to rewrite our founding document – is back with a new bill, this time attempting to rewrite the constitutional and legal foundation of Aotearoa.
Seymour wants to embed the same extreme neoliberal ideas about “individual freedom” and private property rights used by US gun lobbyists and climate deniers to block protections for people and the planet, into our law here in Aotearoa.
Those might be his principles, but they’re not ours.
We are a country that values fairness, that defends nature and looks out for one another. And we have to stop this bill.
What exactly is the Regulatory Standards Bill
The point of the RSB is to try to make all future governments follow a rigid set of ideological “principles” handpicked by Seymour when they are making laws.
These principles would:
- Exclude Te Tiriti o Waitangi entirely.
- Require the government to pay corporations if new rules impact their property, even if those rules are to stop pollution, protect nature, or prevent harm to people and communities.
- Prioritise private property and “individual freedom” over environmental protection, public safety, and indigenous rights.
This law, being pushed by one minor party politician, will tell future elected governments what they can and can’t do, even when New Zealanders vote for change.
What does the RSB look like in practice?
These ACT Party principles are designed so that in all our future laws, corporate profits and individual “freedoms” will trump environmental protection, public health, and indigenous rights.
1. Pay-outs to polluters
If a new law impacts how a company uses its “property” – which could include land, an oil rig, a water use consent, or a mining permit, the RSB says the government must pay compensation. That means the government would have to hand over public money to private corporations just for bringing in basic protections for people and the environment.
2. Freedom for corporations, not communities
The bill treats individual “freedoms” as paramount. That means companies could challenge environmental or public health rules as violations of their freedoms or their “right” to do whatever they want with their property.
These ideas are straight out of the US far-right playbook – and they don’t belong here.
3. No room for equity or Te Tiriti
Right now, under their own guidelines, governments are required to consider Te Tiriti when making laws. Seymour’s bill upends that. By explicitly excluding Te Tiriti from the RSB, he is making sure the treaty will no longer guide how laws are made. Instead, the RSB imposes a new legal order built on property rights and “freedom,” while ignoring our founding document.
Even the Ministry of Justice has warned that the bill fails to recognise Te Tiriti’s constitutional significance or the Crown’s obligations under it. Oh, and they also mentioned Seymour’s Bill is not in line with the Bill of Rights Act.
Seymour has also included his favourite principle, “everyone is equal before the law” – plucked straight from his failed Treaty Principles Bill. It might sound fair, but it deliberately excludes equity. That could make policies designed to address real inequalities, like targeted healthcare for Māori or Pacific communities, vulnerable under the Regulatory Standards Bill.
What happens if a law doesn’t follow Seymour’s principles?
If a new law doesn’t fit Seymour’s ideology, the government has two choices:
- Change the law to comply, or scrap it.
- Publicly justify why they’re going against Seymour’s principles.
This will create huge pressure on future governments to avoid bold, progressive reforms – even when they’re urgently needed. It will lock in a culture of deregulation, where any law protecting health, workers or the environment faces delays, legal challenges and payouts to corporations.
Seymour’s very own corporate complaint board
The bill also creates a “Regulatory Standards Board” – a powerful, unelected body chosen entirely by Seymour. Its job is to hear complaints from corporations and individuals and launch investigations into laws that they think are out of line with Seymour’s principles.
Technically, its rulings aren’t binding, but they’d carry serious political weight. It’s basically a corporate complaint machine designed to stop progressive change and stack the system in favour of big business.
We’ve stopped this bill before, and we can do it again
This is the ACT Party’s fourth attempt to pass this bill. They have failed three times. But Seymour is trying again, this time using the coalition deal to push it through.
We can’t let Seymour rewrite our laws to serve corporate interests, just because Christopher Luxon said he could behind closed doors when they negotiated their coalition agreement.
This is a fight for the future of Aotearoa. If you care about nature, clean water, Indigenous rights, and a liveable climate. Now’s the time to speak up.
